Twenty-six years after the Viet Nam War has receded into history, it is possible
to adopt the detachment of a new generation for whom this tragic experience
is just another chapter in the history book.

The generations of men and women who were involved in the cataclysmic events of
this war came from all walks of life, from professionals to peasants, from
artists to artisans, from manual laborers to intellectuals. In the war's aftermath
large numbers of the diaspora have settled peacefully in this their adopted country,
trying to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, and raising a new generation.

A number of creative and artistic minds among them, who at other times would
contribute greatly to the literary and cultural life of their former homeland, are
still with us today. Many have been forever scarred and silenced by their war-time
experience. But others snapped out of their trauma to relive their dreams, and
began once again to raise their voices, picking up where they had left off decades ago.

Did any of those people swept in the tidal wave of the war ever question the meaning
of it all? There are no doubt some. There are no doubt those who question everything
that happened since the end of World War II. They question notions such as truth, peace,
liberty, the dignity of life, of which Albert Camus spoke in his 1957 Nobel Prize
acceptance speech. Being a Frenchman who had fought during the great war, and suffered
the humiliation of defeat and occupation, Camus attacked the debasement of intelligence
in the service of death and destruction, proclaimed his commitment to freedom, and
upheld the ideals of justice, duty, sacrifice. It is ironic that the very same forces
that Camus deplored for having enslaved France were after the war to be visited
upon a country it was unwilling to relinquish. The voice of protest was muted on this side
of the divide, lest it be branded seditious, subversive, or worse. Yet the situation
was irreconcilable. How do truth, freedom, and justice prevail by subjecting another
people to lies, servitude, and injustice?

The war is a complex issue, irreducible to facile slogans and sanctimonious pronouncements
from any side. One can speak of the nobility of the human mind in the same breadth as
the prevalence of moral bankruptcy. History has recorded the twentieth century as
the worst and the best that humanity has lived through, and laid bare the contradictions
of the human condition. Every noble impulse of which mankind is capable has been
subverted by its antithesis. For this is the essence of humanity, bounced back and
forth between good and evil, forces at once uplifting its spirit and debasing its
nobility.

I am not here examining history, its lessons or even its facts. I am just trying to
recapture a tiny corner of life as it impinged on certain lives who, by virtue of
their endowments, could have been very different from what they are today. My focus
will be circumscribed to the area of literary and artistic creativity that is
abundantly manisfested among a small group of Vietnamese expatriates in the United
States.

Far from being a piece of systematic research, this is but an attempt to initiate
a discourse on the works of some such individuals, which might never come to
light but for efforts like this one.

Regardless of the state of consciousness that the circumstances of warfare must have
aroused among its participants, it behooves us now to scour the present in search
of talents among them that their creativity, voices, feelings, and hope may be
preserved before the march of time obliterates them all.

These remarkable people refuse to extinguish their dreams during the darkest
days of the war, for they are themselves only when they continue to live their
feelings in poetry or in songs. Many are the voices that embrace a romanticism
tinged with melancholy that is ingrained in the Vietnamese psyche. The larger
issues of the time far from impairing this disposition merely pass it by for
those souls who yearn for an expression of emotions first and foremost. It is not
that moral issues do not for them exist; they just do not rise above the threshold
that I am setting for this work.

I have the privilege of knowing one such creative artist.

Writing under the pen name of Lý Lãng Nhân, this poet, songwriter and ertswhile Army
officer who had been cheated out of his artistic career for decades by the war,
had lived through it all. Ly is a long-time friend, going back to the pre-War
years in the fascinating city of Saigon, whom I remember as an artist whose dreams
were stymied, and yet retained an ardent faith in the day when they would become reality.
We were young then, full of life, and dreams for a marvelous future. We could do
anything we wanted, be anyone we wanted, even to become penniless poets, writers,
musicians, artists. Then the war came, and everything in our lives was turned upside
down.

Although Ly was robbed of years of creativity, his poetic sensibility has remained
as acute, and his artistry as rich as they have ever been. Through the years when
death and destruction were constant reminders of a tragic existence, Ly managed to
nurture his gifts. Someday he would break free from the events and resume the
life that he had envisioned in his youth but could not yet live. Now that the war
is a distant memory, he has finally come into his own, albeit belatedly.

Like most able-bodied men in South Viet Nam during the war, Ly was drafted
into the armed forces, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel before the war ended.
Following the waves of exodus to the United States in the mid-1970's, Ly
settled in the Hunstville, Alabama conurbation, and began to rebuild his life.
Over the last two decades, working against the pressure of carving a place under
the sun for his family and himself, he has finally taken up his pen again. In fact
he has never laid down his pen, it simply works in slow motion.

And the result is a collection of poems (a sampling of which is presented here)
that rekindles the past with authenticity and depth of feelings while also
giving voice to his rich experience of the present.

In this space I want to give Ly his due, and let him speak to us in a way that
he was never able to do so before. Settle back then in your comfortable
chair, and share with him his unique experience.

Once upon a time (in 1957 to be precise) there was a young Army officer,
still a bachelor in the prime of his life, whose romantic sensibility decidedly
went against the grain of everything military life stands for. Where discipline
was demanded the officer manifested a reverie that would drive a no-nonsense
martinet out of his mind. Where toughness was required the young officer exhibited
a tender sensitive heart. Yet he took to the military way of life with as much
adaptability as any worthy soldier, and in the process was steeled to the physical
and mental rigors of duty, service, sacrifice, and, not least, privations.

Shortly after his assignment to the 3rd Field Division in Song Mao, the young officer
took a measure of his new surroundings. Not only did he have to reconnoiter the area
to familiarize himself with the terrain for defensive purposes, he also had a
curiosity about what was to be his new home for months and years to come.

Here was a strip of land lying in the coastal plain of Central Viet Nam known to
be among the most desolate in the country. The rocky soil denuded by the wind
relentlessly blowing in from the sea resembled the barren mares of the moon.
During the day the torrid sun baked equipment and men alike while at night
the penetrating cold reduced the soldiers to bundles of shivering bones. It is
a land where nothing grew easily, where the locals eked out a subsistence living at
tremendous cost of labor and toil, where mere survival was a feat of extraordinary
courage, and where staying put was an act of defiance against nature.

This is the ancient land of the kingdom of Champa, whose vestiges now remain
solely in the solitary brick towers and sparse hamlets that punctuate the barrenness
and desolation. The relatively newer Vietnamese settlers, whose inexorable march
to the South over the centuries seemed to have followed a sort of manifest destiny,
swept through the region, some to stay, many to move on to the lush fertile delta
of the mighty Mekong River.

Ly, for he was the young officer in this saga, recollects how he, a Southern boy
accustomed to abundance and green paddies, had to deal with the isolation, the
utter loneliness, the aridity around, and a taciturn population who was as
steadfast as the rocks that strewed the landscape. This was an environment that
would stultify any sensibility and atrophy any lust for life.

Yet, with vivid memory of those days in the forlorn encampment, Ly relives
a love that has long been buried in the mist of decades, which to him is a
poignant evocation, and a heart-rending experience. His is the voice of a soldier
torn between the harsh reality of military duty, the tender feelings of love, and
a vague, drenching melancholy that permeated his soul.

In the Phan Ri area, where he was stationed, there was a pine forest, which though
not as extensive as the rain forests farther south, provided a relief of sorts
from the searing heat of the day. But for Ly the nights on duty were nothing
but long stretches of bitter cold interrupted by dreams about an absent sweetheart.
The utter solitude of the military installation, its mind-numbing routine, and
the constant hazards of hostilities were his daily fare. Yet nothing, not the guns nor
yet the threat of skirmishes could distract the young officer from steeping himself
in his reverie, for nothing could lessen the intense affection he felt for the one
young woman he had met barely a year earlier.

Sheltered in the Phan Ri pine groves of Chamland eve,
As the dew dropped from the trees in the sad moonlight,
I was listening to the wind murmur my name,
When you appeared all sudden in my troubled sleep.

I woke up and beheld the bright stars shine,
My head at rest against the duffel bag,
I clutched the gun and dreamed of my new love
That hardly had a year of painful life.

Bundled in battledress in the cold I shivered
Recalling of the warm days of love together,
O pines, do you know the pains I suffered
For this love that tore my heart asunder?

West of Phan Ri the terrain rises toward the Central Highlands, which
were dotted with small valleys surrounded by craggy hills covered with
xerophilous vegetation. One of these arid valleys, Song Mao, was defended
by units of the 3rd Field Division, a crack outfit made up predominantly of
Nung tribesmen from the mountains of North Viet Nam.

The landscape of Song Mao, the former land of the Chams, was a forbidding,
God-forsaken, unyielding, inhospitable one, totally devoid of romantic
connotations of any kind. Here survival required a firm grasp of reality, a head
in constant lookout for dangers, a body resistant to privations, a mind alert
to shell-shock and boredom, guts, grit, among other things. There was little time
for nostalgic reflections, much less for dreams of tender love or artistic
creations.

Still to Ly, Song Mao had an inexplicable allure, a ruggedness that concealed
ineffable charm, and above all a wildness that electrified his imagination. The
place was a challenge to his mettle, to his instinct of survival, and, oddly enough,
to his artistic sensitivity. Soaking up the oppressive sun during the day and
warding off the bone-chilling air at night, Ly managed to seize a few moments of
peace for his imagination to run wild, his poetry to flow freely, and his songs to
echo a profound nostalgia.

For Ly songs and poetry are indistinguishable. I can imagine him singing his poems
as much as reciting his songs. I have found in both the same creative imagination,
the same grace with which imagery is created, the same poetic sensibility, the same
lyricism, and the same command of the word.

Listen to what a Song Mao evening had evoked in this soldier's fevered mind. This
song, that he wrote decades ago, is to me no less than a piece of exquisite poetry.
The repetitive interjections of Song Mao bespeaks an intense feeling of the pervasive
presence of this haunting landscape in Ly's psyche.

Few moments were more painful to Ly than those he spent one day at the train
station, waiting in vain for the arrival of his girlfriend. There he was in this
lonely Song Mao station, pacing the platform and gazing absent-mindedly at the rails
escaping into the gathering dusk. Then the fog descended, blurring the dim
yellow lights that feebly illuminated the now-deserted building. At last the train
arrived, but not his beloved. When the train had left, carrying with it his dashed
hopes and leaving behind a profound pain, Ly went back to his unit heavy-hearted and
dejected. He was crushed by loneliness. His shattered heart cried silently of
despair.

In rock-strewn Song Mao, girt by forests and mountains
With my gun as companion I have waited a year.
You weren't on the train that left the empty station.
Just be assured, my darling, of my steadfast love.

I awaited your train
Near a wood enshrouded in the deep purple dusk,
And the station lights feebly shining through the fog
In the thick darkness.

I dreamed of you,
Of your dainty smiles lighting up the eventide,
Your dress fluttering in the wind,
Filling my heart with ectasy.

Come back to my waiting arms
Here in the midst of vast wooded hills,
To see our love once more flower
Just as in our old dreams.

No time of the day touches Ly's heart more profoundly than when the sun has sunk below
the horizon. Nightfall casts a magic spell on him. When twilight slowly yields to
darkness, and the birds hurry back to their nests flitting about like myriad stars, he
listens to the silent fall of evening, and the birds' wing flaps woven into
a nocturnal symphony.

His now-home state of Alabama has only a short stretch of beach on the Gulf of Mexico.
Yet, it is not the beach's size that matters. It is enough for him to be there
looking beyond the water's edge, dotted with boats and filled with the songs of
seabirds, to the hazy horizon, for his past loves to revive and infuse his heart
with deep longing.

Adjacent to Phan Ri, Phan Rang province, where Ly was also stationed, creates
a rather different impression. Though still in the arid coastal plain, this area
has certain redeeming qualities that tend to evoke tender feelings and pleasant
thoughts of spring, when butterflies flirt with flowers in radiant sunshine. Still
his vague melancholy lurks just beneath the surface, an indescribable longing for
something that is missing in his life. The deep blue sea in one direction and the new
spring growth of flowers in the other sent Ly to an imaginary world in which the
eternal wayfarer, himself, that is, never reaches his destination from spring to autumn
and back again. His is an unending quest for a love that is not, a reflection of Ly's
own quest for a love that is no more. His is a timeless reverie that transports his
soul to the never-never land of consummated love. Ly uses the image of a butterfly
alighting on a flower as the metaphor of courtship. But absent the object of his
love, and nothing makes sense. All is futile, all is emptiness.

This emptiness fills the void in his heart, and the world becomes empty.

***

Saigon 1972. In the midst of the war, Ly was transferred to the capital from Danang.
One late afternoon while he was sitting in his Jeep in the almost deserted parking lot at
the Tan Son Nhat Air Base waiting for his wife Teresa to get off work, thoughts of the
steadfast love that bound them together came over him.

He pursued his thoughts to the beginning of this love: how it had developed, and how
after decades it was still as strong, as unswerving and as all-consuming as it had ever
been. Right at that moment he was seized by a desire to sing of this faithful commitment
to each other. He wanted to write a lyrical song, something that would stir the listener's
emotions and reveal the depth of his affection for his wife.

Strangely though, Ly found himself struggling hard to get started. And the harder he
tried, the more he found himself deserted by his muse, unable to utter the first word of
the now consummated love. It is as if once attained happiness was no longer what it
had seemed when still uncertain and elusive. It is as if Eden was populated by banality
and vapidity. Yet while the excitement of love had been subdued, its strength managed
to keep working subliminally and providing the impetus for Ly to keep trying.

At last, his efforts resulted in a song that was moving enough and charming enough to
have been played by the band at the Officers' Club No. 20 in Saigon. But Ly was not
exactly satisfied. He kept working on it when he could find the time. His love was too
precious to be relegated to workaday status.

Now thirty years later, he revived the song, and offered it as
a reaffirmation of his love, which has never diminished in commitment, faithfulness, and
intensity. It is a celebration of one of the most noble emotions in human life.

Lest any comment spoil the purity of Ly's sentiments, allow them to speak directly
to your heart.